An Obol for the Ferryman by Constantine Gochis

We were close friends from early childhood.  Our back yards abutted in a quiet area of the upper Bronx, at a time when the land was still unsullied by the tenements to come, when the largely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood was still only one step from that Elysian thoroughfare of universal applicataion, the Grand Concourse.

Larry was the younger of two sons of our neighbors.  Papa Goldberg and his prematurely graying Rose, were not religious. If anything, they were agnostic. In fact, Papa Goldberg was a devout adherent of the Communist philosophy.  My recollection of this somewhat saturnine man was his silent figure seated predicatably on a hammock like chair in his back yard, his head buried in a current copy of the "Daily Worker."  He seemed oblivious to the disharmonious sounds of domesticity, deaf to the shrill exhortations of his wife summoning Robby, the elder brother, to piano practice, or, excoriating the kids bouncing a ball against the side of her home.

My father, who rarely exchanged more than a perfunctory greeting with his neighbors, allowed that he was a "good man", a compliment that must be viewed from his perspective that any male was a threat to the chastity of his four daughters.  Well, perhaps, not an immediate danger as the girls were still children, but definitely a danger to my father's fecund wife who had produced six children, thus far. One of Papa's favorite aphorisms was, to render it phonetically, "Tha se plakosoun" a warning he resorted to when any contact outside the family walls was contemplated. The implicit connotation was that you would be seduced or tumbled. For me, there was only incomprehension. Papa's world had few good men, and no good women.

His appraisal of Mr. Goldberg came at a time when a boarder came to live in the Goldberg household, a Mr. Vollenweiter, who seemed, at the outset, a balance to redress the conjugal inattention inflicted by the taciturn Mr. Goldberg to the woman who was his wife. Since the arrival of the newcomer, she no longer harangued her recalcitrant sons, or made repetitive entreaties to them to practice their music. My father's remark, I learned later, was in commiseration when he observed Vollenweiter and Mrs. Goldberg holding hands with suspicious frequency, right in front of her husband and boys, who saw nothing amiss. I guessed thaat whatever the true meaning of Papa's compliment, Mr. Goldberg was deserving of commiseration.

Larry and I were fast friends, through Junior High and High School, until the War intervened. We received high draft numbers, which allowed sufficient deferral so that Larry had time to marry Bibi, one of our candy store crowd, and sire a pair of twin boys before being shipped to the Pacific for congress with the Japanese. I, in turn, was sent to the European theatre of operations.

After the war, we met intermittently.  Larry and his family moved upstate, ultimately settling in Oneonta, and, in time, he owned a four block square auto supply warehouse and had built a shopping mall.  His two sons excelled in tennis and social activity, had less that charming manners and eschewed work in the family enterprise. One, at least, I can't name him because they were interchangeably identical, chauffered his father, for due consideration over and above already stipulated emoluments. He duly grumbled at the job.

I cannot date my last visit to Larry's home in Oneonta. Bibi was pleased with her home, her husband and excessively tolernt of her progeny. Larry totally ignored them all.

Larry took me on a tour of his domain and committed the sin of hubris, excessive pride in his accomplishments, though he gave some credit to Providence.

"Owe it all to my lucky penny, my Obol," he said, showing me an Indian head penny, still battered looking as when he found it one day as we walked to elementary school.

I was surprised at his remembering the word "Obol" which I had taught him, years before, the ancient equivalent of a penny.  Larry had a way of insinuating profound knowledge by clever usage of select terminology.

He beamed and sang the one Greek word he knew from the lyrics of a son called "Yahti", or "Why". He had the look of the portly Orson Welles. When I suggested he lose weight, he explained that it would pass, that he had been treated with a new miracle drug, cortisone, which caused the weight gain. He had ultimately fainted because of an exaggerated dosage and the treatment had been aborted.

It was several years before we again had contact. He came to New York City with Bibi who needed an operation for a cyst on her spinal column. They had a suite at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he attended his wife daily and from which I received the first of his phone calls that would ensue over the next decade.

There was no plan or pattern to his conversations. His recollections centered upon innocuous incidents in the early years of our childhood. I noticed there were no further mentions of Bibi.  He launched into the distant past. He recalled the days when my family received a delivery of freshly baked Italian bread.  He described the oven smell and taste and soul filling texture of the loaves.  I had no solemn memory of this, and on sober reflection, I would have gratefully exchanged menus with his family, perhaps not for culinary excellence, but for quantity and regularity.

He skipped back a decade in his recollections. "You know, of course, that my brother was in love with your sister, Georgianna."  I remembered. It was difficult to discourage his juvenile advances. He was comic, but there was danger. Georgianna was terrified that our father would appear during one of these moments, and I had fear for Robby's well being, if such an accidental interposition occurred. On one occasion, Robby followed her through our house, reciting a love poem from his Byronic Thesaurus. He coughed, intermittently, having learned that the poets of this period had consumption, which he was sure he also had.  My mother finally ejected him with several swats on his rear with the flat of her broom.

I was on Robby's side, of course. I would have preferred to be a part of his high-school entourage, but I was a year or two too young for this elite. I envied their erudition, and their sophomoric affectations. They listened to Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinski on their Stromberg-Carson console radio. Leon Zelinsky, a classmate, always sat near the speaker, his ear about an inch away. Henry Rugaloff, another of the group, whizzed through the "Alla Turka" movement of a Mozart favorite, a piece that Robby usually mutilated despite his weekly ten dollar piano lessons. Robby coughed his consumptive cough and recited Keat's "Ode to a Waterfowl" to which no one paid attention. 

I was intrigued by these seances in the great living room with the grand piano the pervasive odor of furniture polish, and the restrained sounds, muted by a thick wall to wall rug. Larry dismissed them all and entreated me, "Let's go out and play some stickball; they're burning daylight!"

More years passed with little contact between us. Bibi's tumor turned out to be benigh, but her condition worsened. There were several more surgeries which served only to condemn her to a wheel chair. Then she was confined to bed.

Then came a call to my office. The greeting was in Greek. He had a new word.  "Tee kanees," he said.

"Bibi's in the hospital again?" I offered.

"No, I am", he replied. He offered no explanation of his condition. "Remember our daily two cent Nestle chocolate bars?" He chuckled at his recollection. I settled in for a harangue. "I always got the bigger piece," he laughed.

Yes, he always did. Each morning, we would chip in a penny apiece for the delicacy. He would break it in two, hold a piece in each hand and I would choose. He would always delight in his good fortune getting the larger piece.

"Vollenweiter died, last month," he announced without preamble or connection to the original recollection. "He left all his money to mama, including a big house in Monticello."

My mind went back to a scene in which Larry was wearing one of Vollenweiter's dressing robes, his hand in one of the pockets jiggling large silver coins.  It was the last time I was invited to the Goldberg household. I decided it was time to confront him on why.

"Remember the day you were wearing Vollenweiter's dressing robes and jiggling his coins?"

"Yes," he replied.

"You stole the money, didn't you? They were sure I did it and you said nothing." He and his brother were always silent regarding matters pertaining to Vollenweiter.

He did not answer, but his silence was surely an admission. I had no residual animosity. Money was always important to him and there was little generosity when he had a surfeit. I do not think he was even aware of any moral deficiency despite his father's political orientation. He always had cash, even in the darkest depression days. After class we would stop at Joe's frankfurter wagon and he would ingest two or three of the delicacies, plump, juicy and piled high with mounds of sauerkraut, never once offering to buy one for me. I rarely had the nickel or dime necessary to indulge in the gastronomical orgy.

He returned to the present and made what I thought should have been his first announcement, "My dad moved out. He moved into a furnished room, has no job and refuses help from me or Robby." Then he asked, "I guess you heard the stories going around when I married Bibi?"  I had heard but I denied it. 

"They said I married her to get what every guy on the block got for free." A light went on in my head. It occurred to me that was why he avoided discussing Bibi with me. I had always attributed the fact I did not get an invitation to his wedding to the animosity of his mother. 

He then returned his disjointed reverie back to his father. "He never said a friggin word. He just sat there and read his Daily Worker, while my mother had her own matinees." This vituperation was foreign to Larry. From early childhood, he absorbed teasing, ignored snubs and insults with an insouciant stoic smile. He knew the scuttlebut about Bibi, but married her in spite of it, and bore the half-smiles of his peers, the snide gestures, with equanimity. Was this sensitivity new? Was it identification of his plight with that of his father? It wasn't an absence of concern that drove his and Robby's apparent detachment in the presence of Mr. Vollenweiter. 

I visited him at Mt. Sinai. His legs were uncovered. The right foot was full of sores, bluish red and angry. He was scheduled to have a vein removed in his left leg to bypass a blockage in the right. He bore his travails quietly, but in the meantime, he had a refrigerator filled with goodies to mitigate them. He had diabetes which he insisted still had been caused by the overdoses of cortisone. In spite of his affliction, he produced a panel of Nestle bars, scored for easy breakage. He broke a segment in two and challenged me to choose the obscured larger piece. He laughed a reminiscent childish laugh when I picked the smaller one. I was somewhat abashed by the historical repetition. 

"It's my lucky Obol," he said, producing his battered Indian head penny, now preserved in laminated plastic. "My lucky Obol," he repeated in a somewhat muted tone, as he placed it back securely in his wallet. 

But the copper talisman was a futile barrier against misfortune. Bibi gave up her long battle against death. His mother followed her into eternity. Robby received the major portion of the estate and Larry received the house in Monticello. He informed me of these new travails during a surprise visit to my home.  He walked laboriously with the aid of a can to a chair. His son-chauffeur lolled with studied indifference, in a soft divan.

"It's like walking on fire," he said. "The by-pass did not work."  He was on his way back to Mt. Sinai. 

I saw him one last time in the hospital. He lay on his back, his bed elevated, his right leg severed just above the knee, a sand bag tied at the end of the stump exerting a pull on the truncated member. 

Again, he accepted the judgment of that mysterious force that writes our destiny. He made no comment about his most recent affliction, except for a roar of pain when the doctor pulled the rope holding the suspended sand bag.

He continued to call when he went home to Oneonta. He was now confined to a wheelchair. He required the full time services of a companion nurse whose name was Marta and who made the calls for him to my office.

His subjects remained memories of childhood and youth in the Bronx, in the houses that abutted the upper reaches of that borough. He announced that deprivation has a salutary effect, regretting his access to sufficiency, nay plenty, in which he was raised, and the opulence of fortune into which he had evolved, if this was the cause of his ill health. His references invariably moved to scenes involving my family. He talked about inconsequentials such as bottles of milk delivered outside our doors, iced by Jack Frost, so that the cream pushed up frozen above the bottle top. 

"Your brother, Tony, used to run around in the dead of winter when the ground was frozen hard and icicles hung from the eaves without a jacket. Looka him!" Tony was active, mischievous and clambered like a simian into dangerous places.  I did not want to deprive Larry of the consolation of his premise that praised Tony. To me there was no training to palliate deprivation. It brings more than insult to the body; it brings mortal injury to the soul. The mind cannot see vistas that abound in the world. The needs cloud vision and the soul stagnates in the mire of want.

I was sometimes startled at some of Larry's perceptions. He surprised me on one occasion by asking if I still hated the fact that hair grew between my eyebrows. 

He knew of my embarrassment and envy when we met at our high school performance of the operetta, the "Pirates of Penzance". He knew I hated him for appearing attired, "cap a pie" as a young gentleman, a symphony of fedora hat, suit and topcoat. What I hated most was my satisfaction with a mouton-lamb lined jacket that was the best our deprivation could offer. At seventeen, his way was paved, and I was still asleep.

There were no calls for several months. I finally called Oneonta and one of his twins informed me that Larry was in an army hospital for a rare liver by-pass. A week later when I called, Marta said, "Larry died, this morning."  There was no further conversation.

He was just short of his sixtieth birthday and left his empire to his sons.

There was no need to pay for the journey. An Obol is all that is required by the Ferryman and Larry always had the necessary fare in his wallet. 

9/11: 25 Years On, We Seem to Have Decided to Surrender, Never Mind Forgetting

Today, the day after the 25th year commemoration of the act of war that was 9/11, it is the Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary, a feast that was added to the Catholic Calendar by Pope Innocent the XI to give thanks for the victory over the Ottoman Empire in the year 1683. The army of Jan Sobieski has asked for intervention through Our Lady of Czestochowa, and it was victorious. 

I only know this from the Magnificat Magazine, because when I initially tried to look it up online, interestingly the identity of the opponent, The Ottoman Empire, was muted. I found the following on Catholic Answers, offered as context. 

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/under-marys-holy-name-victory-in-vienna-september-12-1683

On this tragic anniversary, a tragedy perpetruated by human evil, not by some random chance, the repetition of the phrase, "Never Forget!" or "We Will Never Forget!" began to upset me because the phrase was in a long line of moments of cognitive dissonance I have had, and many others have had since that despicable day. In 2019, one of our young new generation Muslim representatives said this in part:

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties. So you can’t just say that today someone is looking at me strange, that I am going to try to make myself look pleasant. You have to say this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it. I am going to talk to them and ask them why. Because that is a right you have.”

I read a comment like this, and so many online, on the public airwaves and in the remaining newspapers, print and online, and at least I think I might be losing my mind. I will tell you why. I love immigrants from other places, legal immigrants, as were my recent forbearers, who want to be part of the American Experiment, not ones who tell us constantly how evil we are.  Imperfect, yes. That's the result of the sin of Adam and Eve, but not evil. In fact, the history that you are busy revising, and we stupid native born, naturalized and those who chose to be citizens because they actually LIKE it here, are allowing, out of what Gad Saad has called "Suicidal Empathy", demonstrates that, at least for a while, the nation founded under God and natural law, was indeed a beacon. Although the Founding Father's and their progeny knew about Islam (Barbary Coast). The poor things likely had no idea that it would be paired with Communism, under the theory the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (That partnership is doomed to fail once they conquer the rest of us). Any questioning of the motives of an Ilhan Omar, is not prejudice, which has no basis in evidence or fact, it is based on a stated purpose and goal of a faith, and includes comments like that above. You are not comfortable that people wonder about your view of your faith and the United States, when you tell us what you think? The genius of Communism and of your approach as well is that you use our own principles, bastardize them, and then tell us we are not abiding by them. Some people did something. What people? Who? Why? Have we not been told that America is the Great Satan over and over? Yeah, you have a right to ask what the concerns of other Americans are. We have a right to ask without being accused of a prejudice that is not prejudice, but experiences, like 9/11 that pretty much confirm the statements, the history of a group that seeks and has always sought to conquer. 

The last days of memorializing 9/11 has brought stories that I never have heard in 25 years, some of them even more horrifically highlighting the barbaric cruelty of that day than when I first observed the terror on my television set. I think they were withheld so we would forget. And so the next generation would be made oblivious to it, as they are, the same generation who just cannot understand why they must work for money. 

Forgot? This is more than forgetting. I hope that these new revelations and reminders of the fact that people were tortured (things like jet fuel falling on them when the planes hit; having to choose to jump rather than be burned to a crisp) and murdered will reinstate some national memory. We have become hard of heart when it comes to truth. I never understood that phrase when I read it in the Bible. But when people act so consistently against not only the interests of others, but their own interests, hardness of heart is not only a moral failure, but a form of insanity. Stockholm Syndrome? We have been so brainwashed in the last more than 25 years about everything, that we actually walk into the trap with smiles. Even the Church forgets its own history with aggressors. 

We need to say it. We do not want Communism. We do not want Islam. We want the Judeo-Christian nation that was painstakingly crafted so that people did not have to worry about somebody doing something bad to us. But we have to wake up and reverse a trend that has been building even more horribly since what, the 1930s? And before. 

Are we giving up the Republic, or not?

This does not mean that we hate anyone. I hate no one. But when you say you want to hurt us, and you act on it, then we have a right to say, "You are not allowed to do this." We do hate principles and actions which demean, abuse, murder and enslave.We can forgive your transgression. But we do not have to allow you to commit others. You need to stop and if you decline, we have a right to self-protection. And that includes prudent suspicion. Small example. I went to my Church today to pray. It is one of the few places that keeps its doors open during the day. When I got there I heard a loud noise, and then realized there was a homeless man on the choir loft steps who did not look approachable. He had left his food and water on one of the tables. We live, alas, in a world where homeless, mentally ill people stab others from behind. Is that a prejudice, or a reality? I would never tell the man he had to leave, because he has a right to be there and he wasn't doing anything destructive. And I am still glad the doors are open. But I am not going to stay there with my back to him. Where is the unfairness, the cruelty here in this small example? 

I am already old and while I am seeing the destruction of our civilization far faster than I expected (which my late father warned me was coming in my time almost 20 years ago). Can you imagine Moses coming down from the mountain today? Commandments, what commandments? Too many are still dancing around the Golden Calf and sacrificing other humans to guttural impulses. Too many are standing by and saying to themselves, "It has nothing to do with me." Those people who died in three airplanes, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and from cancers of the pile of rubble that was once businesses and human beings, deserve better indeed. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/09/the-victims-of-9-11-deserved-better/

Remembrance: Aunt Terri, 1927-2026

I am usually able to write about people, places and things without much difficulty. But on this occasion, I am having difficulty indeed in composing this blog memorial to the last member of our immediate family's World War II generation. "Our" refers to my cousin Carol and I. Though we had a large extended Irish-American family (and I have a large extended Greek-American family as well), there was little interaction while we were growing up with those cousins, second, third and probably fourth. Aunt Terri kept up with them, but we had rare sightings. Whose explicit or implicit decision that was I cannot say. So, my cousin Carol and her nephew, also my cousin, Chris, in Seattle, (by her late sister, Barbara), are the lone remainders of a time and place, that to me, feels a galaxy away. 

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the immediate Higgins/Moffatt core group lived in the same five story, walk up, tri-part building, on Townsend Avenue in the Bronx, near Mt. Eden Avenue and the still somewhat Grand Concourse. There was 1594, where my grandmother lived, and my oldest Aunt, Kathleen (although later we would be told she never lived there, a tale unto itself we never quite got to the bottom of), the Moffatt side, including my Uncle Frank's sister and her kids, Eileen, and later Patricia. Then 1596, which had only three apartments on each floor, where my parents and I lived on the fourth floor, next door to Uncle Frank and Aunt Terri. We shared a fire escape between our apartment bedrooms. And finally 1598, which was where (I might be off on who lived where I realize in the haze of time), my Aunt Rita and Uncle Ben lived with their two daughters. My grandfather, Andrew, who died only eight months after I was born, in December 1955, had been the building superintendant for some years, and the four girls, Kathleen, Rita, Rosetta and Teresa, had lived with him and his wife in the basement to which there was attached an apartment. We kids, me, Barbara, Carol, Eileen, (Patricia was too young), played in the courtyard regularly, and attended family parties at one or another of the apartments in each part of the building, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, birthdays, that to my mind, the eldest of the cousins, were too well fueled by alcohol and deep secret hurts, more than the presents and social joys of the various occasions. The age difference between me and my cousins was significant, even at 2 years and nine months older than my closest in age cousin, Barbara. By 1970, I was in high school. We had moved from the one bedroom in the devolving neighborhood to a two bedroom in a still pleasant area of the Bronx, near the Jerome Reservoir, not entirely up to my mother's standards and desire--a place with a doorman. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank moved to a luxurious high rise rental building on Broadway and 64th Street, right across from Lincoln Center in 1974, the same year my mother died at 48. Aunt Terri got the doorman my mother craved without being satisfied. People, over the years thought thereby that they had a lot of money. The family was scandalized that they were willing (or able) to spend the great sum of $450.00 a month to move there. The 37th Floor with a million dollar view. Or the higher up, the higher the million. But Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank had no kids, and they did have two incomes at a time when that was unusual, he being a bus driver and she being an executive secretary at places like Imperial Reading. And the place was rent stabilized. (Upon her death, the rent was $2050). By this time, the rest of her immediate family, my mother, Rosetta and father Constantine, her sister Rita (Carol and Barbara's mother) and Uncle Ben, and Uncle Frank's sister and family (Ronnie, Tommy and their two kids Eileen and Patricia) had already moved. By 1975, my mother, my Grandmother Higgins, and Carol's father had all died. This, of itself, shifted relationships. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank spent most of their social time with his sister Ronnie, and his other sister, Helen, and Ronnie and Tommy's kids in New Jersey. That part of the family remained intact at least for a time, while my side had already been pared down by death and separation. 

I had very little to do with Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank, and from my perspective, really, they had little to do with me after my mother died. I will speak for myself when I say that, though Aunt Terri was my Godmother, we were never particularly close during my childhood. If truth be told, I thought that since I never enjoyed the active social life that they generated with my parents in all the restaurants and Bars of New York, (my cousins and I went to such places at the Top of the Sixes, the Rainbow Room, El Morocco, Chateau Henri IV, the Cattlemen; I guess there were no babysitters) and at the family parties, which always led to extra strain in my parents' carefully constructed relationship, Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank found me a bit of a pill, a kill joy. Uncle Frank's nieces seemed more suited to going out than I did.  I was closer (if I were ever capable of it) to my Aunt Rita, who seemed to have a bead on what it was to be a child, in a way that neither my mother, nor Aunt Terri did. And, my Aunt Terri, seeing that my mother was perhaps too strict with me emotionally, and acknowledging it later in our lives, did nothing to intervene at key times in which she could have reminded my mother that I was a child, not a cat to be trained. (My mother was a cat whisperer). Those were the times. You minded your own business. I can hear my cousin Carol shouting as I write this, "No, No! that isn't right!!!"  But to be fair, most of the time, my life was calm enough, and it definitely was well provided in every way that even as I write this I feel guilty to suggest any lack. To the extent of the good and/or successful that I am, my mother and father were extraordinary. 

By 1981, after I got my law license in New York, I moved to Los Angeles, an intense dream I had had since my first visit in 1977. Aunt Terri came to visit once, maybe twice, while I lived here. We kept in touch by telephone and Aunt Terri regaled me with the happenings with her New Jersey nieces and in-laws. She remained close to my cousin Barbara until Barbara's untimely death in 1992.  But it was a sporadic and superficial relationship between us at best.  Carol was estranged from her and my other Aunt, Kathleen, for reasons I completely understood for many years. Ultimately, there was a rapprochement and after Uncle Frank died 26 years ago, and Terri remained in her Lincoln Plaza apartment alone, Carol began to visit and help as needed. For a short while, her grandnephew from New Jersey lived with her, but that did not ultimately work out. I never remembered Aunt Terri, or any of my Irish relatives, as particularly religious, and definitely not a regular church goer. After Uncle Frank died, Aunt Terri began to attend and assist at her local parish, where she made new friends. She was always very attentive to her old and new friends. I was amazed by the amount of correspondence she had maintained.                  

Her New Jersey nieces wanted her to move to them. She nearly found herself in the Garden State after a fall in the 2000s, but ultimately she was an inveterate New Yorker. She wasn't going to die anywhere other than in New York, and if she could manage it, in the same apartment. In the last decade or more, I found myself closer to my Aunt Terri, and she to me in large part because of Carol. The nearly eight years between Carol and I had compressed, and while we had had vastly separate lives when we were young, we became closer. I visited New York multiple times, stayed with Aunt Terri a few, and as I had seen my mother became ill, a coldness they shared, seemed to thaw. She would tell me how much, when I was born, that she had wanted me to be her child (she could not have children and Uncle Frank was resistant to adoption, according to Aunt Terri.) She would often tell me in her later years "Know that I love you. . . ." words that I never recalled from days long gone by. Aunt Terri was the remaining connection, the sole remaining connection, to my long dead mother. The affection she clearly had for my mother was enormous. Right across from her favorite chair was a large photograph of my mother to which she spoke regularly, telling my mother of whatever activities were going on here in California with me. To be fair, she spoke to all the other relatives and friends pictured in her apartment and to items she imbued with their essence. But I do think my mother got special priority. When a high end coffee and dessert place opened up on her block, called "Rosetta" she was delighted. It did feel slightly cosmic. 

When she could no longer get to Church, Aunt Terri had a regular, and wonderful, Eucharistic Minister, John, who sometimes brought his dog, Abby. She prayed the way I always have hoped to pray, in continuous conversation, ordinary conversation, with Our Lord. She was grateful for every day she woke up, even when activity became extremely limited. She loved her Yankees, and the original Perry Mason. There was even a picture of her and Raymond Burr by the television from one of her visits to Los Angeles, at the Sheraton Universal, where she stayed. And then there were the favorite old movies on TCM.

My cousin and I tried to get what we are sure are family secrets out of her. She circumvented, and sometimes I think, reinvented. Whatever the family secrets, they died with her. I don't know if that is for the best or not. 

I am glad to say that I decided to visit New York in April 2026, to celebrate her 99th Birthday, and share with her my birthday a few days later. She had the determination to live to 100, but every visit had demonstrated a lessening of energy and an increasing frailty. She was wearing out. We ate yet another meal from the wonderful Fiorello's downstairs, though it was take out because she really could not get around anymore, and refused a wheel chair (she only conceded to a walker in the last year). My cousin did it up, with sashes and musical cards and candles and chocolate cake. It was a perfect wrap up for all of us. 

I am always amazed at my cousin's manifest love toward her, truly wishing the best for the other. 

Aunt Terri fell, or passed out, or whatever it was around August 12, and was hospitalized at Mt. Sinai. She had resisted the idea of assisted living or more right up to that moment, but she knew, without being told (though she was) that she needed far more than my cousin could do. The way I see it, the way my cousin sees it, she decided it was time to let the Lord take her. She died on August 18, quietly. The way, I think, she wanted to, although she would have preferred it be in her apartment.

Her funeral was beautiful, where she wanted it to be, at her old parish, concelebrated by three priests, with a cantor with the voice of an angel, and joined by quite a few (considering that at her age so many people are gone, and that she had not been around the parish for some several years) of those who knew her. I stayed in her apartment a few days before it would be cleaned out, the apartment she had lived in 52 years. I memorized the view, the stuff, and took lots of photographs, recalled the moments and was grateful for the reconnection we had had. 

On August 26, I left 37A, leaving the keys on the kitchen counter, closing a big chapter of her life, and my own. I wish I could really pinpoint exactly what I feel. This is the best I seem able to do.

                                        

John Williams: The 94 Year Old Maestro Back on His Stage at the Hollywood Bowl

September 4, 2026. Every year, as part of a summer Hollywood Bowl package, there is a weekend for the music of John Williams. Until July 8, 2023, it was titled the Maestro at the Movies, and Mr. Williams conducted selections from his own works. You would have to have lived under a rock and never seen a movie or watched television not to have heard his compositions. When I was a kid, his early music welcomed and closed the Huntley-Brinkley Report. His was the theme for the Olympics for many a year, and remains so. He scored Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, ET, and Harry Potter, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Schindler's List. He scored much people do not recall, but to which they might hum mindlessly with a soft pleasure. 

My friends, Len and Andrew, and a guest local or east coast visitor have been at these concerts multiple times. The highlight always was the innocence of the bulk of 17,000 people waving their toy light sabers of many colors in the open air venue as the Maestro conducted his famous Star Wars marches. In July 2023, he was joined by two other well known conductors, Gustavo Dudamel and David Newman, a scion of the famous Newman family of composers of movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s. If I recall Mr. Williams held a saber himself one of the nights. Every year we worried that maybe this would be his last hurrah, as the reality of age catches up even to the renowned among us. 

And then it happened. We heard that there were health problems, not particularly identified, but inevitable for any nonogenerian. He had to cancel this and that. To the extent he was seen, including at the dedication of the Hollywood Bowl Stage to him, he was wheelchair bound and frail. 

We still attended the summer event as part of our package, and we enjoyed it, but it lacked the verve that can only be present when the composer is, one who knew how to charmingly milk the audience with whether there would be an encore. He would drift off the stage, baton in hand, stopping for the cheers, and moving toward the wing of the stage, only to stop and do a little motion we called "sleepy time", his hands at his head to indicate he was done. But then he would come back and there would be another familiar piece. That looked to be no more after 2023.

Last night, Len, Andrew, and our visitor from the East (who had to be cajoled to make his usual trip to Southern California from New York, Matt, the son of our long time college friends) ate our sandwiches and mused about the good old days of this concert, now called "A Tribute to John Williams". We still enjoyed them, but I said, "They are really not the same." And based on press and photos, Andrew pronounced and we agreed with equal authority that John Williams would never appear again. 

Bryce Dallas Howard, the actress daughter of Ron Howard, did the commentary in between the various selections, slightly varied from the previous years. It included more of what I admit to enjoying a great deal, watching the film cuts to the accompaniment of the orchestra, just like sitting in a scoring session at a studio, except with thousands of people and under the stars. Some of these clips I hadn't seen in years and they were as affecting as ever. I was as happy last night as I was in the 1970s that ET got to go home, and that those kids flew on bicycles to meet his spaceship in a field. Dallas Howard noted that none of these magical things would be believable, could even happen, without the music of John Williams. They wouldn't have, for me. This I know. 

As always happens at the near end of a concert, lots of people were already filing out, so they could try to beat the rush of crowd and cars and escape to their homes. Sure, there would be an encore, but the evening was winding down. 

And then, whatever the Star Wars March to come, so that everyone could make a final wave of sabers, there he was, John Williams, the Maestro himself, being wheeled out toward the podium and the conductor, David Newman, and Bryce Dallas Howard, and facing us surprised as can be. We had just said with deep affirmation that we would never see him on stage again. And there he was, to the astonished cheers of everyone, cameras suddenly out.  We can speculate about what the health issue is, besides old age, and it appears he cannot speak. He certainly did not speak this night, but he conducted, as of old. No words, but an absolute sense of joy emanated from him as he conducted, and after he conducted. I found myself shrieking in appreciation. This was a rare cultural historical moment. I was, we were, overjoyed to be there to share it. But what I found is how much I loved watching him soak up the love of the crowd, and how he had this amazing personal moment and gave this amazing personal moment to us. 

And maybe to let us know he is all there, inside a well worn body of talent, he even did, "Sleepy Time". 

Will he be back tonight, and tomorrow, for the same show. Len, Andrew, Matt and I agreed, "if he feels up to it." So glad he felt up to it for sure on September 4, 2026. 

Others got better videos than I did, I was so discombobulated by his appearance. 

https://www.facebook.com/100078399062087/videos/2128077847808284/

I am having trouble downloading, so all I can say, since the mainstream has not really reported on it, go to FB or Instagram. Lots of videos.